Whatever your views on royalty, it's quite hard to find anyone who dislikes Prince William

He seems incredibly normal for someone who has grown up in his utterly abnormal surroundings. He had every right to emerge from his curious childhood as a dysfuncational uber-posh oddball; instead he appears to be rather charming and down-to-earth.

This week, he was propelled solidly back into the central glare of the limelight with the news that a second baby Cambridge was on the way. All over the country people cheered, newspapers emptied front pages and factories were gearing up to produce commemorative mugs, T-shirts and those china ornaments advertised in the back of colour supplements.

And yet William appeared rather sanguine about the the whole thing. “It’s important that we all focus on the big news and the big international and domestic things that are going on at the moment,” he said. “That’s what my thoughts are at the moment.” That was partly a political moment, a reflection of the Royal Family’s trepidation over that small matter of Scottish independence.

But I suspect it was rather more a statement of his own personal opinion – he’s been through war zones, the death of his mother and birth of his first child, not to mention global fame from the day he was born. The man probably has a sense of perspective.

And he’s also probably finding pregnancy isn’t quite as much fun in his household as it is in some others. His wife, the Duchess of Cambridge, may have access to the finest medical brains in the country to guide her through to birth but there’s one thing  counting against her – her own body.

She is suffering from a particularly nasty condition called hyperemesis gravidarum. It’s the same condition that afflicted my wife during two pregnancies and my memories are still intense – of days in Watford General, seeing my wife connected to a drip, so dehydrated and wearied she could barely speak, let alone move around.

The media reports have called this a “severe form of morning sickness” but that simply doesn’t tell the story. Morning sickness, while often very unpleasant, suggests an image of a woman feeling poorly and nibbling ginger biscuits. Hyperemesis is not a tougher version of that – it’s a completely different condition.

It is devastating. Here is the woman you love, carrying your baby, yet she is too ill to look after either herself or the other children in the family.

At what should be a time of excitement, of planning and preparation, my wife felt as if she were dying. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink and was wilting away before my eyes. A sip of water or a crumb of food would both lead to violent vomiting, exhausting the patient even further.

So we went to hospital. There, once again, we had to fight our way past the perception  this was just a bad bout of morning sickness. Sympathy was in staggeringly short supply and we waited hours and hours to be admitted. This, I remind you, was a pregnant woman with an acute health problem causing a crisis in her life and our family.

What’s remarkable is the unborn child is, in health terms, pretty much oblivious to all this. One of the reasons the poor sufferer feels so grim is the vitamins, proteins and goodness are all going to the little person growing inside. If you’ve got hyperemesis, and you’re throwing up just about everything going down your throat, there is nothing left to nourish you. That’s why you end up on an intravenous drip.

And this, it would seem, is what now bedevils the Duchess of Cambridge. Wealthy, beautiful and privileged she may be but I suspect that, right now, she’s feeling miserably ill. The idea of talking would be horrible, of going out would be absurd. The concept of getting dressed up to face photographers must seem like a bad joke.

She does have the advantage she won’t have to suffer a debilitating wait at Watford General to convince people she really is ill. If there is something good that can come out of Kate’s suffering, let it be a greater understanding that hyperemesis gravidarum is real, and horrible.

It is a fortnight until the Moor Park 10k, the running race that wends its way through the golf course and then around the streets of the estate.

It raises money for the Lynda Jackson Macmillan Centre, which offers support, counselling and information to cancer patients. It’s a great event and a very worthwhile cause.

 Last year I ran this race for the first time and, notably, got overtaken by a man who was on the phone to a restaurant booking a table for dinner. I was also comprehensively outpaced by a runner in Roman sandals and finished about 20 minutes behind the winner.

And all of that is fine. I’m not in this to win it, but to survive in one piece and hopefully go marginally quicker than I did last year. Once again, the debate rages in my mind about what to listen to as I run the course – last year it was a Danny Baker podcast; this year’s preparations have seen me adopt a wide range of poor-quality pop songs that have the virtue of singalongability. When you’re knackered, a quick burst of One Direction can work wonders.

There’s something rather lovely about a 10k race – it’s a challenging distance but, barring pulled muscles, nasty falls or a lack of training, it’s the sort of race where you should feel pretty confident about getting to the end. But next month I’m having a go at a half-marathon, which feels altogether more terrifying.

I keep telling myself it’s only two 10k races bolted together, so if I can do one then I can obviously do two. Can’t I? A host of my colleagues ran the Great North Run the other day, which is the same distance, so if they can do that, surely it can’t be that tough. Can it?

I’ve got to finish because I’m being sponsored to raise money for the National Autistic Society (yes, more donations very welcome...) and I’ve also got my pride and determination. So please – if you’ve got some uplifting songs to suggest for my soundtrack, fire away. Tweet me at @adamparsons1, or comment here, or send a carrier pigeon or whatever. My friends, I need inspiration.